The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has held talks with Stephen Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center, (whistle blowers-e) from Washington today. Assessing the conversation as a very interesting and useful Commissioner Sabic has stated the following:

"I'm glad I was able to talk about experiences of the United States, a country that has been building a quality system to protect whistleblowers for a very long time, with a man who is one of the leading experts in this field. We have discussed many issues of importance to the fight against corruption and mostly, of course, we talked about the protection of whistleblowers.
The issue of protection of insiders, who are more and more often called whistle blowers ("those who blow whistles") in the world, or as we increasingly call them – alarm raisers (''uzbunjivaci), is really a very current one. Renowned auditing companies such as e.g. PricewaterhouseCoopers, based on the results of research conducted in many countries in the world and thousands of institutions and companies, claim that over 40% of cases of corruption and fraud are exposed due to a whistleblower. Therefore, it is hard to imagine the concept of an effective fight against corruption in the modern world if, among other things, it does not include a significant whistleblowers' contribution to the detection of corruption and abuse.
Of course, the state that expects such a contribution from whistleblowers must have laws to protect them from abuse, particularly from various forms of "accountability." Many states adopted such laws long ago. In the U.S. for example, the first law was passed 200 years ago, and later it was followed by 50 similar laws. Unfortunately, we do not have even one, at least not a serious one. Yet, we have numerous examples of people who have "spoken out" and revealed corruption and then been exposed to different, often very unpleasant forms of "revenge" for "revealing secrets". For years, since I have become the Commissioner for Information, I have advocated for their legal protection. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I have not been alone in that, the advocating has been to no avail for now.
It is high time to finally start constructing serious legal mechanisms to protect whistleblowers. We should not fool ourselves that this protection can be provided by "cosmetic" means - void, verbal proclamations. It is also not a task that can be done easily, by palliative means, conclusions and bylaws. It is a complex task that involves a serious intervention in the criminal law, labor law, the media and administrative matters. It is very important to finally change the attitude towards the protection of whistleblowers. And the importance is manifold – because of the GRECO recommendations, or EU, justice and fairness, and most obviously because of the most concrete reason - the presence of corruption to the extent that is extremely worrying and therefore requires suppression by all means. "